Dark Rising

TEN

‘Why not drop us into Iraq? That’s secure now.’ Alex was looking at the map of the Middle East that Hammerson had spread out on his desk.

The Hammer shook his head. ‘Secure, maybe. Sealed and silent, not a chance. We put you down anywhere in Iraq and Tehran will know about it within the hour. Same goes for Kuwait, Saudi and Bahrain. There’s no backup, and time is your enemy – you’ll need all the head start you can get. Has to be Israel, then you cross over to the target zone.’

Alex raised an eyebrow at his superior officer. ‘Cross Syrian airspace, over Iraq and then drop into Iran – that’s a lot of unfriendly eyes. Choppers are too slow, and that also rules out trekking in from the Gulf… Hmm, HALO?’

Hammerson smiled, pushed his chair back and brought his large hands together behind his head. ‘Oh, yeah. I’m thinking I’m going to throw you all out the back of a B2 Spirit at 35,000 feet and see what happens.’

‘Night drop?’ Alex asked.

Hammerson nodded. ‘High and dark. Twice the fun.’

Alex grinned. If a human being truly wanted to experience speed, forget about travelling in the cockpit of a jet or racing car. Just do a High Altitude Low Opening jump. All HAWCs had to perform HALOs as part of their special training; however, 35,000 feet was the absolute maximum without wearing a full pressurised suit. The air temperature was well below freezing at that height and frostbite, hypothermia and glass-eye were a possibility. Usually, though, you weren’t there long enough for any of those to occur; the real danger came from the low air pressure that could cause pulmonary or even cerebral oedema – swelling of the lungs or brain. The latter led to blackouts or hallucinations – you simply forgot why you needed to open your chute. Terminal velocity was around 200 miles per hour for a freefall, but with the low air pressure you could reach double that velocity. Hit the ground at those speeds and they’d be collecting you with a mop and bucket.

‘The new suits you’ll be using with the visors down will give you adequate environmental protection and we can rig in disposable oxygen,’ Hammerson said. ‘Drop will take around three minutes, two minutes of which are going to be pretty unpleasant, doubly so for our Israeli contingent.’ Hammerson pulled a more detailed map and photographs out of the pile on his desk.

‘Israelis? New suits?’ Alex knitted his brows.

‘Some regional collaboration – we’ll get to that. Infiltration will be approximately one mile south of the Persepolis ruins. Extraction point to be determined by you. We’ll have a surface-skimming gunship ready; by then we won’t care if anyone hears or sees us.’

Alex studied the map of Iran and the photographs of the Marv Dasht basin spread out before him – nearly 650,000 square miles of dry desert, mountains and age-old hostility. ‘Surveillance?’ he asked. Getting captured in Iran as a spy wouldn’t make for a very pleasant few days – torture and execution would ruin a good holiday every time.

‘Nothing electronic, but you can bet there’ll be a few lenses pointed skyward. The B2 will be well above that for your drop, and your suits won’t show up on the way down. On the ground… maybe.’

Alex nodded. ‘We can deal with anything on the ground.’ He paused for a moment then said, ‘We don’t need help. They’ll just slow us down.’

‘This time you might. The complex technology and hostile environment means we’ll need specialists – in astrophysics, languages and logistics.’

Alex shook his head. ‘I’ve got Sam Reid, he knows plenty about nuclear fission and the technology. And you’re telling me you want me take a language specialist? I don’t expect to be doing much talking.’

‘I know, I know, and one or both of them will probably be a Mossad torpedo. But we need to work with the Israelis on this – the last thing we want is them making a strike on Iran. Consider it a small price for being able to use their bases and resources. Besides, we think the situation may be more complex than just some sort of test burst. The Israelis have more eyes and ears in Iran than we’ll ever have. My gut feeling is you may need them. There’ll be a further briefing on the ground in Israel.’

‘Two of them, five of us. If they fall behind, they stay behind.’

‘Okay, then. Best case: seven in, seven out. But it’ll be your call on how you execute your mission objectives. Now, let’s see what we’ve got to cover your back, soldier.’

Hammerson moved the map and photos aside and turned his computer sideways so they could both see the screen. He was already logged on to the USSTRATCOM intranet, the internal secure website for the strategic command’s senior officers. The first page he opened was for research and development, where he selected ‘defensive weaponry’, then ‘arid environment body armour’.

Alex whistled. The screen showed what looked like a sand-coloured robot. The new dry-zone combat suit combined a total-cover uniform with a synthetic material base and armour plates covering the chest area, back and shoulders. Over the neck, stomach, knees and elbows it was armadillo-segmented for maximum mobility. The facial area was open, but a high-tech helmet covered the head and travelled down the side of the face to halfway along the chin. A visor could be pulled out and down from the brow brim.

‘Got to be lightweight,’ Alex said. ‘Is the plating a polymer structure?’

‘Nope, not even close. Benefit of being in the HAWCs – we get all the experimental stuff from the labs. What you see there is the result of millions of dollars of research and a lot of free education from Operation Desert Shield. In a dry environment it’ll be your new best friend; this suit material is thermally created using the latest in para-aramid synthetic fibres. I say thermally because there’s no stitching; it’s actually grown then fused together. Strength-to-weight ratio is about five to one – we use this stuff in warplanes now. Its basic design is to keep out heat, sand and dust but retain moisture. It won’t stop a bullet, but it will stop a knife thrust, unless someone like you is doing the thrusting. What will stop a bullet is the plating – what you thought was a polymer structure is actually a zirconium dioxide ceramic. This stuff ranks an 8.5 on the Mohs scale of hardness. Steel is only about a six. It’s light, won’t melt, is non-conductive and non-magnetic. Helmet is the same material and has all your communication equipment built-in.’

‘Wow, can it fly?’

Hammerson laughed. ‘Soon. That’ll be in the next gen.’ He sat quietly for a moment watching Alex before reaching for a folder and speaking again. ‘There is one more thing; the exoskeleton and para-aramids will need to be upgraded for radiation shielding. The material will be compressed to simulate the dense atomic structure of lead, with only minimal extra weight, and without the heavy metal toxicity.’

Alex nodded slowly. ‘Hmm, you think the Iranians are still leaking radiation?’

Hammerson gave a shrug. He opened the folder and lifted out a photograph. He looked stonily at the image for a few seconds before he slid it across to Alex.

A disfigured body was displayed with half its torso flattened and stretched over ten additional feet. It was spread out on a canvas sheet and displayed like the rotting carcass of a washed-up deep-sea animal. Pieces of white material and road tar were still embedded within its mass.

Alex shook his head and frowned as he slid the photograph back. ‘Radiation does that?’

Hammerson shrugged and looked down at the image. ‘We have no idea what does that. Or how that… man, came to be on American soil. What we do know is that he was a German national by the name of Rudolf Hoeckler. He was one of the leading theoretical particle physicists in the world. We’ve since learned through our intelligence networks that he passed into Iranian territory eighteen months ago, and our agents have told us they believed he was still there. It was our firm belief that Hoeckler was assisting them in their uranium enrichment program. We don’t know how he got to Colorado Springs, but he still wore his Iranian ID tags and lab coat.’

He sat back. ‘Autopsy report said he was frozen to 2.7 degrees kelvin, and had been in a vacuum – to quote the report, “predominant symptoms of someone who had been in a non-terrestrial atmosphere”.’ Hammerson raised his eyebrows, then grinned humourlessly. ‘That’s not all. The corpse was heavily irradiated and caused some secondary contamination before it was sealed in a lead casket. You see now why we’re including some heavy particle protection built into the suits.’

After a moment, Alex nodded. ‘Yes, understood.’

‘Let’s move on.’ Hammerson turned the screen back around to face himself and keyed in a few more commands. ‘As usual, I’ll let you choose your own small weaponry, but there is something new I’d suggest you consider. Say hello to the KBELT – Klystron Beam Emitted Light Technology.’

Alex could see the major’s eyes moving admiringly over the images; he knew that sometimes his superior officer missed the fieldwork. He turned the screen back to Alex again.

Welcome to the twenty-first century, thought Alex. The shoulder-mounted rifle was all black, but a list of palettes below told him he could have it in a camouflage colour to match his terrain. No stock, held like a sawn-off pump action, with a square casing over the trigger. The barrel started to smooth and round until it ended in a moulded bulb effect at the muzzle. Hmm, too small for a hardened projectile, Alex thought. Must be another compressed gas round device.

Hammerson was staring at the screen almost lovingly as he began describing the weaponry. ‘The latest weaponised emitted-light technology. Miniaturised power pack collects electrons and packs them into the klystron tube here, which acts like a linear beam vacuum. Will deliver a one-million-joule energy pulse that will travel at close to the speed of light to your target – no jamming, no recoil, no deviation and the speed means little chance of evasion. Two settings – high and low energy pulse. High energy will cut a pencil-sized hole through anything; low energy will give you the same result as one hundred pounds of TNT – all delivered in a single, focused, explosive punch.’

‘Limitations?’

‘Not many, but some things to consider. This generation of laser device requires an enormous amount of energy – that’s why it contains its own generator. Next version will have a replaceable battery and be small enough for pistol form, but it won’t be ready for this project. What it means for you is that after twenty shots it’ll need to recharge for about two minutes. Second consideration – it only spits a pulse, no beam. The lab boys found that the laser streaming tended to bloom over distance, which reduced its intensity. The pulse is effective and keeps the power-packet delivery intact.’

‘Nice, I’ll take six, and one for the farm.’ Alex was leaning forward and smiling in anticipation.

Hammerson chuckled. ‘You can have one – the trade-off is you give the lab a field report on your return. It’ll be ready in a few hours, after we camouflage-coat it. One more thing – we’re giving you some spiders. Take a look.’

Hammerson called up a video that showed a scientist placing on the ground a small steel box, roughly the size of a packet of cigarettes, with a circular black disc on one side. The camera refocused for a few seconds on an empty car about fifty feet in the distance, then returned to the box. The box stood up on eight spindly segmented legs and scuttled towards the car, covering the distance that separated them in a matter of seconds. It clambered onto one of the car’s wheels, a small red light flashed once and it detonated. After the rain of debris and smoke had cleared, nothing remained but a crater in the ground.

Hammerson cocked an eyebrow at Alex in a ‘get a kick outta that?’ look. ‘We’ve come a long way from the static claymore,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow’s mines are a combination of robotics and computerisation. Forget the technical name for these – we just call them spiders, you can see why. Easy to use, low failure rate, high-yield blasts. They can be set to detonate on physical contact or on a timer. Hell, you can program these things to set up their own ambush. Your combat suits come with two, pre-coded with a built-in signature catalogue so they can tell us from the bad guys.’

Alex could tell Hammerson loved this stuff. Both men had the greatest respect for the military research and development branch. The new materials and weaponry those guys brought to the field gave them an edge, and sometimes that was all it took.

‘Questions?’ Hammerson waited a second and then went on. ‘Okay, dust off in six hours. Gather your team. Go in fast and come out smiling, soldier. Good luck.’

‘Thanks, Jack.’

They both stood and Alex shook Hammerson’s hand. Already the excitement was boiling within him. Alex never worried for himself; he figured he was already on his second chance anyway. Every mission was simply an opportunity to push himself a little harder, to test himself just a little more. To flex muscles and senses that seemed to evolve every day. But for some of the other men on the team, it meant a death sentence.

Alex had lost good soldiers before, and he’d lose them again – that’s what they’d all signed up for. All he could do was ensure they were field ready; the rest was up to them. As for the Israelis, if they wanted to tag along, fine. He just hoped they were either very tough or very smart.